


Set A Fire In My Head

by Milieu



Series: 33 Day Guro Challenge [23]
Category: Homestuck, X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: 33 Day Guro Challenge, Alternate Universe, Blood, Child Abuse, Crossover, Gen, Implied/Referenced Kidnapping, Mutant Powers, Psychic Abilities
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-31
Updated: 2016-05-31
Packaged: 2018-06-09 04:42:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6890662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Milieu/pseuds/Milieu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How Damara became everything she was meant to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Set A Fire In My Head

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt 23 - Nosebleed
> 
> Set in the X-Men movie universe, in some indistinct period after X-Men: First Class. Title is from the song Trouble by Halsey.

The first time Damara realizes what her powers do to her is when she is three years old.

She is throwing a tantrum. (She is always throwing a tantrum. It is the only way to show her displeasure, when she does not yet have words.) She screams and kicks and cries, and that does not move the doctor. (He tells her to call him Doc. She will never do this.)

She wants him to move. She wants to  _make_ him move.

And so she does.

The split-second of surprise that flits across his face before he is flung across the room is the sweetest thing three-year-old Damara has ever seen.

She relishes it in the few seconds before the splitting migraine strikes her, before she feels the blood flowing from her nose and running over her upper lip, and she blacks out.

\---

She has a sister out there somewhere.

She only knows this because the doctor tells her. He only tells her because he wants to hurt her. It is his little bit of leverage, something to hold over her head when threats and bruises and starvation lose their sting.

Sometimes she thinks he could be lying, both about the mysterious younger sister and how she might have the same powers as Damara, and all the things he'd do to her to bring them out. He could be lying, and she could disobey once again, and he'd have nothing more to threaten her with.

But he could also be telling the truth. And as worn-down and bitter and desperate as she is, Damara is still human on the inside (no matter what the doctor tells her otherwise) and she clings to the mental image of that sweet, happy younger sister playing with her friends, and chokes on terror and disgust whenever she considers throwing that girl to the doctor's mercy.

When she can no longer fight for herself, she fights for that girl whose name she does not even know, until her lips and chin and the front of her shirt are slick with blood and she feels as though a spike is being driven into her temples from the exertion of moving and manipulating the things he asks her to.

If she had a bit more precision, a bit more control, she'd take the fireplace poker or one of the trophies off the wall and beat his shiny bald cueball head in.

When the thought of the mysterious sister isn't enough, that mental image is what drives her.

\---

The years pass. Damara fights and defies and is punished and gives in and uses her powers and bleeds. And then she does it again. And again. And again.

She looks alien when she sees herself in the mirror, some painfully thin, scraggly Asian girl with curling horns growing from her scalp. (She doesn't know why the horns began to grow, but they always ache when she exerts herself psychically.)

The days and weeks and months blend together and she wants to live but she wants to die, and she will never know her sister, and she will be trapped here forever, uselessly trying to develop her powers for a man who wants nothing from them but data and amusement.

Until the day that he slips up.

She wouldn't have thought of it if she hadn't been practicing in secret, trying to get the hang of those tiny, precise movements like unbending a paperclip or twisting a ribbon into her hair.

Until the day that he leaves, as he sometimes does, and he forgets to check every lock and deadbolt.

Damara stares at the door, held only by its one lock, and something stirs within her, the same thing that made her kick and scream and claw and fight with everything she had during the first few years.

The concentration burns, but she keeps at it. She stares at the paperclip and ever so slowly, ever so carefully, it twists. She concentrates until she feels as though her eyes might actually be on fire, until she feels the telltale trails of blood from her nose, and she concentrates still, until the paperclip slides home in the lock.

When she hears the click, she could cry.

She doesn't cry, though. Instead she runs, and when the house's alarm sounds, desperation ignites in her and then she is flying,  _flying_ , away from the doctor and that house and towards a world that she has never known.

Damara laughs into the wind as it whips away her tears (When did she start crying after all?) and her blood, and she keeps laughing until her vision goes gray and she falls back to the earth.

\---

When she wakes, there is a soft bed, a cool washcloth on Damara's forehead, and a strange-looking woman and oddly-dressed man by her bedside.

She struggles to speak, to explain about the doctor and the sister and her escape, but even now at age - Seventeen? Eighteen? She doesn't know. - she barely has words. The odd people seem to understand, however, and their eyes are gentle when they look at her and hard when they quietly speak to each other about the doctor.

The man's name is Erik and the woman is Raven. (Sometimes, they go by unusual nicknames. Magneto and Mystique. Damara decides she likes the nicknames.) She is like them, they tell her. A mutant. Someone special. Not a monster. Not a weapon.

They tell her that there are more people like the three of them, many more, and that Erik is gathering them together so that they can fight for their freedom against people like the doctor, who would use or destroy them. They tell her that she is safe here, that she can learn to use her abilities for herself, not for the demands of any crazed government scientist, that she can do what she wants with it.

Damara just nods weakly and tries to smile. It will take her a long time to recover enough to physically withstand using her powers again, but she already knows what she is going to do.

\---

The years pass.

It takes some work, but Damara manages to count the days and weeks as they go by, and to track her progress with pride.

\---

A CIA-affiliated scientist, codenamed Scratch, is alone in his home. He nurses a cup of coffee and briefly considers adding alcohol. He always makes this consideration and always decides against it. He prefers to have his wits about him in any situation.

Tonight, he may regret that policy.

A red light flares outside the window, and he has just enough time to be confused before the window shatters and the wall it is embedded in is blown inward. A chunk of plaster and brick pins him to his chair, painfully driving the breath through his lungs. Silhouetted by the light is a figure he recognizes instantly, and for perhaps the first time in his life, Doc Scratch feels small and helpless and afraid.

"Damara..."

She grins at him and he sees her teeth have grown needle-sharp. Surrounded by the red light, hair wild, horns framing her face, she looks every bit the demon he sometimes said she was to torment her.

"No Damara," she says. "Handmaid now."

She raises her hands and concentrates.

This time, he is the one who bleeds.


End file.
